00:00:01 Speaker 1: The bartender will be cleaning pint glasses with a dirty rag, but that doesn't matter because the beer is served in cans anyway, unless the fish are literally jumping into boat, I don't even care anymore. What you ain't got a can of emergency corn underneath the seat of your Florid Ranger, You're going to die of something completely preventable because you're an idiot. Good morning, degenerate anglers, and welcome to Bent, the fishing podcast that supplied the virus that almost fried your two thousand two compact laptop because you insisted on downloading it from Lime Wire. I'm Joe Surmellie. I'm as Nulty. Actually I was more of a napster guy. Then. Yeah, he he doesn't hate me. I hope he's listening right now. I mean, I love napster. The quality of music was terrible, and you were risking like the security of your hard drive and everything on it every time you downloaded that that Eminem bootleg freestyle from some random bought Yugoslavia. But I don't know that I liked the lawlessness of it. I just enjoyed that at the time, dude, that those were the days there was also Kazakh and Diet Kazak. Remember those those somehow I don't know. Yeah, yeah, you were a napster generation a couple of years. But anyway, I mean it was gambling, That's what it was called. Like it is like I want this. I want some Huba stank jams. I don't want to pay for them upa stank Will I be rocking out to Huba stank in ten minutes before heading the site class or or driving a comp Usa and my pajamas, you know what I'm saying to beg them to save my computer at any costs. Click download to see what you want. I got it. I got it from Lime, where I swear Yeah, all right, Luckily you always win when you click on Black Rifle Coffee dot com slash meat Eater, no trojan viruses. They're just delicious roast order coffee that you can purchase by the bag or sign up for their subscription service and let the Black Rifle Coffee crew bring coffee to your front porch every month. I agree with all the things Miles just said, and as I think most of you guys know by now, the Bent podcast is fueled by Black Rifle Coffee. It keeps us firing on all cylinders so we can come up with the best peer to peer downloading jokes that you have ever heard. And if you want to be as tax sharp and relevant as we clearly are, drop the promo code met eater when you're buying your black Rifle coffee and score off your order. Speaking of a relevant and tax sharp I think, uh, I think we got we got a smooth moves segments on the cutting edge, so to speak. That's that's how I put it. Yeah, we've got a cherished friend of the program, Captain Zach hammer Miller, joining us today in our segment dedicated to letting guides and Captain's vent about dumb things clients have done. And as we know from past episodes featuring Zach, he tends to be endearingly grumpy. And I'll tell you what, dude, he was plenty grumpy when we recorded this because he was actually up here in Jersey when we laid this down. And this was just this past October for his annual hammer migration to the Northeast and every year he comes up just to get out of the South Florida heat and do some striper fishing while enjoying chillier tempts and this year it was eighty degrees his entire visit, and this this striper bite was non existent, like there were more kids building sand castles on the beach than like peanut bunker in the wash. So thanks global warming, you ruin the Hammers trip. But you did make him extra salty for smooth Moves, which I appreciate. Why why, oh, my God, joining us today on smooth Moves, my my very good friend, my dear friend of many years now, Captain Zach hammer Miller. And I emphasized the captain because I did not when when we first met you were no captain. We could not attach that to the front of your name. Yes, that is true, but I want to preface this by saying thanks for having me back on. I didn't think I was ever going to make it back on because it's turned into the Lance Show and I got bumped in favor of that tool shed. You told him what I said about him right, that just the sound of his voice makes you want to beat a mercilessly. My offer stands. I am here to fight for the good people of the Bent podcast in our battle against taking Lance down. Well anyway, Zach is from Port St. Lucy, Florida. Yet here he is in New Jersey for our annual rendezvous where we basically like to high schoolers just take over my in law's beach house. Yes, pretty much, it's free, it's good, we got beer. Joe actually has a half eaten piece of cold pizza on the table in front of him right now without a plate, so it is kind of like college. It's it's a throwback to college. Anyway, three years is still plenty of time, especially in South Florida, to see some some clients do some absolutely ridiculous shit. So I'm gonna get you the floor or the table here with a half eating pizza on it, and please regale us with the most WTF smooth move that that comes to mind. All right, well let me take it from here. Finish up your pie real quick. But a couple of years ago, I had a guy reach out to me and he said he wanted to go tarpin fishing in the middle of the winter. And I'm like, okay, you we're probably not gonna catch anything, but if you want to pay for the boat ride, no problem. I tried to talk him out of this trip like ten times, and he just demanded we go tarpin fishing. I'm like, all right, let's go. So we go out there. Just have to interject and say, um, so you're one of those those charter captains that's so into it you actually try and talk clients out of going fishing. Oh yeah, if it's not a suicide bite, screw it. It's not even worth it, I swear, and like, it's not worth the headache unless the fish are literally jumping in the boat. I don't even care anymore. Okay, go on, But anyway, we go out there. It's a Chamber of Commerce day in December, seventy degrees gin clear Water, and we set up this guy and his girlfriend, right. This guy's about fifties, girlfriends about eighteen. So he shows up with this brand new backpack saying he brought all the stuff we needed. He stopped at bass Pro on the way down and he opens it up and there's like a thousand dollars worth of ship in his backpack. And I'm like, okay, I got everything we need though whatever. He was just kind of bringing it so he could like flex on me. He's like, look how much money I have that I bought all this tackle, and I'm like, all right, whatever. So we set up, we're tarp and fishing, and we actually see a couple rolling around, but jin clearwater. They didn't want anything to do with what we were offering him over there. So after a few hours, I'm like, listen, let's try to at least catch something before we go back in. Right, I'm like, let's get up, reel the stuff in, and go. And he had the backpack laying up on the front of a bow on my boat. I have a bay boat, so there's you know, not a million places to say, and I fire up the engine, I pull up the I pilot and he sits down on top of the backpack and I see him stand up and he like looks down at the backpack, and then he looks at me, and then he looks down at the backpack again, and he turns around. He doesn't say a word, and there's blood pouring out of this guy's ass, and I'm like, holy shit, I'm like what just happened? And I don't know and he sits down and the girls like, oh my god, you ass his bloody and I'm like okay, I'm like, everybody hold on a second, so he opens up the backpack and in the middle of his shopping spree, he decided it was a good idea to buy a brand new Dexter filet knife, and it came in a plastic sheath, and he happened to sit on the backpack and the knife was so sharp and went through the sheet, through the backpack and literally tore his ass a new one. And he dropped his pants on the front of my boat, and there was a big gash in his cheek, and I'm like, that's not gonna heal for a long time, buddy, But he ended up chartering me again, went out in the summer, crossed him, absolutely crossed the sales and kings, and it's been coming around ever since. I don't even really entirely know where to go with that, other than I guess it ties back to the whole don't bring a mountain of ship, because if you're hiring a captain, he should have it. And friendly reminder that if Zack says yes to your charter inquiry, you're gonna light him the up and lance. The more like depth and flavor that I get from of Zack's just deep hatred of lance Vie. The more the more positive I am that he and I we just we gotta hang out. Yeah, he's yeah, he's he's very vocal about the staining for Lansing. Yes, you guys would get along. I also got to say, you know, we've talked about clients bringing too much stuff on this show before and past food moves. But in terms of tackle, I guess I can kind of understand the mentality of thinking you'll look cool, you know, or in the know, or more pro whatever if perhaps you have, say a nicer rod than your guide, or maybe you think you'll have some ringer of a lure fly that he doesn't have, but a knife. Like my favorite part of fishing with a guide, especially in the salt, is that I don't have to cut the damn fish at the end of the day, no doubt. It's like a sweet little cherry on the like God, I don't have to I don't have to do so I just got to do the fun part. None of the world exactly. So why why would you think you'd wind up in a scenario where where fish needed cleaning and your guide wouldn't have a filet knife. I don't think it's a question of thinking, the guy doesn't have a knife, it's gotta be just like pure upsmanship, right, Like, so I picture crocodile dundee, Right, yeah, Yeah, that's not a knife. Yeah, that's that's like what I was thinking was going on in his head. But who the hell knows? Man, Like so much client behavior is is nearly indecipherable. It's it's it's Freudian. Yeah, it's like it's shrouded in deep psychoanalytical mystery. Hey, all you Cite grad students out there looking for a dissertation or a thesis topic, I think I think we got something for you. Check check that one out. Anyway, let's lift the veil on a different kind of mystery, one that's better suited to us English majors. In this installment of the Weekly Word, Joe is gonna get a little bit nautical. But don't worry, all you folks in the middle of the country there. If you've got a boat of any kind, you have a pair of these words in your garage or driveway. Webster's Dictionary defines fish as This week's word is gunnal, which simply refers to the upper edge of the side of a boat. Or ship. Everything from a ten foot john boat to a seventy two ft hatters with a sexy Carolina flair, to the Queen Mary to a canoe has a gunnal. But generally speaking, I feel like it's a term used more frequently by Salty coastal anglers, as in, where's Tommy hanging over the gunwale? Puk and his brains out? Or quit banging that sinker off the gunnale, you're gonna chip the gel coat. Even though every one of those LUNs on Lake of the Woods chasing muskies and sarks hunting cats on the Mississippi has gunnals, I feel like in these settings most dudes just simply call it the side of the boat. Regardless, it's an interesting word, particularly to me as an editor of outdoor content, because nobody can spell it. Take a second to spell gunnal in your head. I'll wait. If you came up with g u n n e l, you have failed, and let me tell you what many quote season fishing writers have also failed that test. G U n n e l, also pronounced gunnal, is a real word and a real thing, but ironically it's a fish. According to Mirriam Webster's The gunnal is an elongated laterally compressed fish with a dorsal fin that runs along most of the back and reduced or absent pelvic fins. It occurs in cool inshore waters of the Northern Hemisphere. I looked it up and learned that it's pretty much an eel with the head of a baby link cod Miles can take that one for finn clips later. If you want to spell the gunnal that's on the side of the used eight six pro line walk around covered in moss and slowly being reclaimed by the earth in your backyard, that would be gu n w a l E. Let's break it down back in olden times, like when black pepper and human in Montreal State, seasoning were more valuable than gold, or perhaps when Blackbeard was kicking off generations of debauchery and what is now Myrtle Beach, the gunnal was called the gun ridge. The top edge of wooden sailing warships had to be reinforced not only to support the weight of cannons, but withstand the recoil and offset the stress is created when those cannons were sending rounds over to opposing vessels. That explains the gun part of gunnal. The w a l e part over here is sort of a year old word for playing, derived from the even ye older word wallu, which meant ridge by itself. However, w a l e is pronounced just like it's spelled whale. So why is gunnal not pronounced gun wale? Best I can tell? Even though whale never meant wall, some ancient scruffy sailors began pronouncing it as gunwall, and then they did that British thing where in order to say words faster, they take away a letter for no good reason, pretend that w isn't there, and now you have gonald. Subsequently, this information is also just let a modicum of credence to your insistence that your fishing boat is in fact a battleship. Scrabble enthusiasts, you're welcome. I just gave you two new words so you can dominate your next socially distanced Friday night tournament, or for those of you still waiting to make a move, and the words with Friends game that's been dormant since like two thousand nine ish, I'll say I feel like that was the prime of Words with Friends, surprise your cousin at roommate you haven't reached out to in ten freaking years and hit him with gunnell. Yeah, come on, I mean, who's not playing Words with Friends right now in the middle of the cod are are they? Like? Is like, is that still a popular thing? I don't even know. I am yeah, but you're But you're like Canada with pop music. They're like a few steps behind on the billboards, like Hoodie and the blowfish is still the ship up there. I hate to say, dude, Fruit and you overtook Words with Friends years ago. I am happy, happy, happy to be compared to Canada. Anytime like that is totally good with me. You can do that anytime you want. And and I hope all of you out there right now are updating that Words with Friends app and and searching for me, so you can issue a challenge, because I will take it. And while you're doing that, we're gonna update you with fish news. Fish news escalated quickly, so before we actually hit fish news, this is where we take care of some housekeeping. And I just want to let everyone know about this. This collaboration I came across called common Wild and so people like Joe and me and the company we work for, we belong to this incredibly broad category referred to as the quote unquote outdoor industry, right and which could, which basically covers everything from extreme long distance high mountain yoga brands to dirt bike manufacturers like Group. It's it's it's anyone making a living off of people playing outside, right and and that industry, brought as it is, often gets criticized, i'd say, rightfully for making money off of our shared spaces without really doing anything for them, like profiting off them without supporting them. So so this Common Wild collaboration is a chance for any outdoor brands, no matter how desperate they are, to come together despite their differences, and try and leverage their their various audiences and customer bases towards three shared goals, right, and those are expanding access to public lands and waters, safeguarding wilderness and wildlife, and protecting public lands. Basically, they're selling some gear and they're putting a percent of the profit in good places. So if you're still looking for a Christmas gift and you want one you can feel good about, I'd i'd say check out Common Wild they don't have a whole lot of stuff. That's the first time they're doing it. But they've got a few things. And I think it's gonna grow year over year. So that that's my little plug this week for for housekeeping. Go check out common wild I like it. I'm gonna check it outcause it's already all in December and uh man, I have not gotten everything for all all the people yet. Um I've done nothing. You know. I find it very stressful. But that's good. I like that. That's good. Shout out. I'm gonna I'm gonna give one real quick. I gotta listeners shout out that that must happen very quickly here before we go on. And that's to Mr Zach Smith. And Zach sent a very nice email to us at bent at the meat eater dot Com totals he loved the show, then tacked on, you did, however, joke about chumming for freshwater trout, and I did last weekend news. I said that I said that nobody does that nobody would like chum for trout, and Zach continues all contrary, AMI goes see a few of US Appalachian Americans in West Virginia have perfected the art, allow me the time to elaborate, and boy did he Boy did he elaborate, Zack, No bullshit. If we had a Bent magazine, I'd turn your email into an online story. It's a sixth step tutorial written in viven detail, including key points like clean the old power bait off your hook before rigging your corn. Right, hang a bomber on your line between the two biggest thighs on your spinning rod as your bait soaks, and as he puts it, when the bober smacks the rod to the tune of John Denver's Country Roads, you set that hook and yanked that trout up that eight foot bank. I mean, did he even had fixes in case you can't carry out steps one through six, such as what you ain't got a can of emergency corn underneath the seat of your forward ranger, No worries, buddy, put the power bait back on. Grab a handful of gravel from the dead end dirt road. Toss three handfuls of it in the water so it trills as it scatters across the surface. Dude, I love this so much, and I wish, I wish we could read the whole thing is easily one of my favorite emails we've gotten since we started this show. Made my day. And Uh, that's gonna conclude shout outs for this week. Now we can move on to news. Remember, Miles and I do not know which news stories the other guys bringing to the table. This is a competition, Shan and Uh. A winner will be chosen at the end um when our audio engineer Phil chimes in to do just that. You, Sara, lead off this week, You've got to float up news, defy us. I will, all right, So first I'm gonna I'm gonna give us a little good news on the migratory fish front. And look, I know this is a beat I hit a lot, and it's usually like super depressing and everything's terrible and blah blah blah blah. But I'm gonna I'm gonna try and give us a little bit of good. Is it West Coast Steel? Is it West Coast Steel? It's it's West Coast Rivers. Yeah, steel Head live in this river too, But which is great? We cover that. I just always feel like I'm like, I don't know what to say. I don't fish. I think I think you will have some thoughts on that even though you may not know about it. All right, So currently the Klamath River, which runs along the Oregon California border, is blocked by six different dams. The Klamath used to see the third largest salmon run in the lower forty eight. But you know, six dams. So now the Coho runs are down like the Spring Chinook or down like and this is terrible. But so the fall Chinook runs have been so bad the last few years. The local native tribe they had to buy fish from the grocery store for their annual salmon festival a couple of years ago. Like, that's how bad it is. It ain't like Lewis and no. But again, like I said at the beginning, this is this is gonna be a positive story, not my usual downer salmon. So so hang on all right. Back in two thousand eight, a whole bunch of different groups came together and they agreed on a plan that would remove the four lowest dams on the Klamate. Those four hydro electric dams are they're outdated and they're just kind of problematic. Right. They were built before we understood the full impacts of dams, so they don't include any fish ladders or any way for fish to get through them to migrate. Like. They're just they're just bad. There's blockages. They're also really inefficient compared to modern dams in terms of generating power, and they don't do anything else. They don't they're not irrigation damns. They don't do anything for flood control. So upgrading these dams into compliance with modern environmental standards, it would just be prohibitively expensive. It wouldn't make any sense. Yeah. In fact, at this point, those damns barely generate enough power to keep up with their basic operations and maintenance costs. Their dogs right there, they're not doing anything. So as a results of that, all these people came together, they came to this agreement, and that agreement for removal. It's just been stuck in these legal battles for the past dozen years. And I'm not going to go into the details of all this because it would take way too long. It's not that interesting. But a recent announcement from just just like a week ago seems to get this project back on track, and the removal of these four dams is set to begin now in so this would be the largest damn removal project yet proposed in the US on a single river. And that's following a trend one that I like. So in the past twenty years, over dams have come down in the US, with roughly a quarter of those since right, So this is this is all good news, right, it's good news for migrating fish and for rivers and for estuaries. But something we don't like talk about, removing hydro electric dams also means that we're losing an energy source, right, And that's that's an argument that those of us on the fish side, like, we just tend to conveniently ignore that, like we start talking about and stuff. Yeah, it's all gonna be fine. Right, So here's another side to that part. According to Forbes, I just found this article just just dropped, a new hydro electric company called natal Energy has been working really closely with Phish biologists to redesign energy generating dams in ways that won't harm fish passage and won't prevent nutrient sediment flow, which is one of the other issues they have. Right. So, the designs for these dams are different for conventional dams in a few different ways. First, they don't span the whole river, right like no traditional ramp like goes across the whole river and blocks the whole thing up, but instead focus on a small section of moving water so that a lot of the dam remains retains rather its natural passage. Second, they only require a drop of thirty feet to run their turbines right now. Compare that to a traditional dam, which requires usually about a nine ft drop. It's a huge difference. And then also apparently they say they've come up with new turbines that they claim are completely safe for fish, and I do not I do not understand the physics of this, if I'm gonna be honest, But the simple explanation from what I could kind of parse out, seems to be that the blades have been totally redesigned so that the blades of turbines spin, but they instead of chopping fish into tiny little bits, they somehow push them away unharmed. And like somewhere in there that they had this analogy to like it's sort of like an air bag, and I don't know how it works. But again, they claim they've got these turbines redesigned so they won't hurt fish, And all this together is just say, like I really appreciate the thought and the effort and the creativity and all the collaboration that so many people seem to be putting into river ecosystems and dams and energy generation right now. I am, as you know, as I think everybody knows, I'm fully in favor of damn removal in terms of the ones that are screwing up our fisheries. But I also, like, I get it. We we need to be generating energy, and we need clean energy from dams. So like, I'm hopeful that we can get rid of all the old shitty dams and learn from our mistakes. But I also hope that we can find ways to to harness the power of rivers without completely screwing everything up and maintain their natural functions. I don't know that Natal Energy has this all figured out, but the fact that they're working on it gives me this sense of hope, which is nice because usually, as we've covered, when I'm talking about this, I'm like all dooming, gloom and cynicism. So I get to feel a little I found one that brought a little bit of hope to this topic conversation. Well, it sounds great, but I mean, I think the reality is even if if this stuff moves forward, I mean, this is this is years down the road, right, I mean, like it takes so much time to to get us there. I am intrigued by a damn that allows passage because it doesn't block the whole river. So like the turbine thing, that's just for like the dummies that don't know to go that way. Yeah, I mean, particularly for juvenile fish. They don't necessarily have that much control when they're They just kind of go wherever they go, you know, and and a lot of them get chopped up in turbines. Yeah. Yeah, And I spoke too quickly. You're right there. They are the baby fish that that's a deal. But I will say, you know, these damn issues, it doesn't come up quite as often on the East Coast, like it's the damn removal is such a big thing on the West coast with the salmon and steelhead runs. But just personally, I mean, there was a damn that got blown out on a no nothing river here that you've actually fished the Musconet Cong in New Jersey, right, it's a stalker's stream. There's a there's a little bit of wild reproduction there but you're talking about the Klamate, which has so much recreational value and could bring so many dollars in for a fishery, And now here's this little stream out here that that that's nothing. It's just a pretty little stream. In Jersey, they blew out a couple of dams on the low end, and like overnight, like the next season, there were stripers and American chad in that river. So it's no joke. How getting rid of a few like how quickly that turns everything around? It's true. And and look the reason that you don't there there's a ton of damn rouble going on out east. You don't hear as much about it because your main marquis species. You know, that whole Atlantic salmon thing. We we knocked them out a while ago, that's true. If that's true, they don't exist in Maine like that. Yeah, Like if we still had Atlantic salmon, this same conversation would be happening out east and just the same way, right in my opinion, And I also think that the folks on the West coast are looking at Atlantic salmon is a cautionary tale and being like we're not that far from that. We need to change up what we're doing and and so at least that that's how I hope that dynamics playing out. But I also haven't given up on the Atlantic sem, and I think there's a possible future for that if we can figure out we'll see. That's a huge, huge conversation, man, that we could get off on. But I mean, I've Connecticut tried very hard to get that run going again. Didn't really work and and it really because you're right, it does all come down to Damns. Like, unless they have a free run, it's gonna be hard to ever re establish that. Um. And I actually have fished to a stream that runs through a farm of my wife's grandparents and and caught tons and tons of fingerling Atlantics. They dumped them way up there, and that was all part of the program. UM. So good, good point. And I'm trying to think of how to use that to segue into my my always the challenge. Yeah, I'm trying really hard. Sometimes I jot something down and I have it and I just don't. Um. So we're gonna go from We're gonna go from the damn Damns to the damn COVID about that. I like that that's all I got. That's all I got. Anyway, This story here comes to us from the website of Denver seven News. Okay, headline ice fishing tents to the rescue restaurant owner looking to provide a personal dining experience. Okay, now, most of you, you've already quickly put the pieces together here, right. It's it's certainly no secret that the Rhona has dealt a crushing blow to restaurants. And while I was delighted um to see outside dining create at least a little uptick in business over this summer, I'm sure I'm not the only one who was thinking like, well, that's great, but what the hell do they do when it gets cold? Right? And now? Now, furthermore, we all know that that restaurants in many states are gonna get their legs cut out again around the holidays with with the COVID spiking across the country. Um, which is going to put the kabash on on indoor dining even though it was already reduced all summers. So good on Pam Breer, she's the owner of West Main tap Room and Grill. In deb of her for thinking outside the box and frankly I'm not really surprised someone jumped on the ice fishing tent angle. I was kind of waiting for this to happen. She's just the first one that I see. I've seen him come out and do this. So, according to the story, you thought of this yourself. You're like, you know what they need to do? Fish bullshit, No bullshit. I I was like, that's where this is gonna go, and and and here it went. So Denver is currently back in the red zone in terms of virus transmission, and that means gatherings are limited. Indoor events are not allowed, restaurants can only serve on the patio or take out, and last calls eight pm. And Pam Breer is not happy with these renewed restrictions. Now. She says she got by all summer at indoor seating and with tables outside. Now she's dealing with the cold, can't have anyone inside. So from the story, Brier said she considered purchasing a large tent to seek customers that one of her patios, but the thirty thousand dollar price tag was prohibited. Yeah, I would imagine so given this situation, so at a customer's suggestion, she purchased twenty nine smaller ice fishing tents and portable heaters. Okay, thirteen of the tents will hold up to eight people, and sixteen of them will hold up to four people. And she says, we're gonna advertise it as a personal dining experience for a party of four or party of eight. She said. Now, she also said, right, she pulled customers to see if they'd be interested in individual tent dining. So I guess just like a table for one or two, and she said many of them said yeah, like I'm down. So, according to her, if her tent experiment works, if this works, she may get through the winter and through the holidays without having to layoff or furlough employees again, which is what she's trying to avoid. And a couple initial thoughts on this right, So, first, just just to put it on record, my heart bleeds for the restaurant, Biz. I have a lot of friends who are in it. I'm sure you have a lot of friends who are in it too. And I really do give her credit for the ingenuity here. But my big question not to be this guy, but like throughout this entire pandemic, has been when does outside dining become inside dining. You know what I'm saying, You know what I'm driving at. I've seen I've seen it here, like at the Jersey Shore. I was down there in October. Restaurants enclosed their outside seating intense and fired up heaters, and I can't help but think, like, didn't you just kind of create the same environment as inside dining? Right? And but listen to be to be clear, I'm not coming down on these restaurants, right, it is kind of a loophole. They need to make money. And at least a few months ago, people around here had no issue packing into a heated tent to eat a burrito, right, So that's my first thought. Individual ice tents for a couple of members of the household, maybe, But like, would I cram into a well heated ice tent for eight hours on a lake with eight dudes I don't live with right now? I wouldn't. Like, I wouldn't write why why risk that to go ice fishing? Um? And just Other thoughts include how long until a child gets burned on a propane heater or some lady charges the ship out of her Fendi bag. Because I don't think I've ever been in a pop up with a heater where flesh or clothing wasn't singed like to some degree by the end of the day. And and and lastly, if you're a hardcore ice fisherman, think man, like, what what a treat it will be to dine in an ice tent while smelling of like zest or Irish spring instead of ball sweat, and while enjoying the aroma of Rickatony carbon era instead of you know, regurgitated Emerald Shiner's spilled Miller high Life and farts. You know what a what a strange twist, you know I have. I have a lot of love for that particular aroma. It brings into some wonderful memories. It's it's good, it can be good. It's like the smell of gasoline. It smells memory brings you to some good place. This is all I'm gonna say. And I I got a couple of points. One I think if I get this right, it sounds like maybe I'm wrong, But my I'm picturing individual parties dining within these tents, not multiple tables with different people. And no, no, no, no, you're right. So like she has all these tent set up and you would reserve one. It's like we're a party of eight. You get you get the big shelter, right, So you're you're making that choice. I get it. That's fine, that makes sense to me. That's the choice they're making. That's great. I think that's a responsible choice for I think that's way more responsible than what you were talking about. It. Like I throw a big tent over the outside and everybody sits together. But here's the other thing. I don't know that this woman has ever spent any time inside on ice shelters, who has spent a lot of time in an ice shelter a reasonable amount of time and even lived in them for days on end. There's not a whole lot of room to move around, and so it's not the most comfortable place. Like part of dining out is being able to feel comfortable and relaxed, and and that's not the experience when when you're in a nice shelter. They're not They're not designed to spread out and enjoy yourself. They're designed to like huddle up and look down into a hole. Right. And then the last thing I'm gonna say is the people I really feel for here are the servers, because you know how hard it is just to get in and out of an ice shelter on your own. You took the word every time you're drinks, every time, we're gonna spill every single sir. The zipper stuck? Can you un zip the zipper? And the dude's gonna be like, which zipper this not? That just opens up the screen. I'm sorry, Pam. I wish the best, but I really do this. I hope they're their Eskimo ice shelters personally, because I'm a big fan of those Estimo and I've spent a lot of time. It better be real cold out because you know as well as I do. You fire up a propane in an Eskimo like it's I've been out when it's like ten degrees and you're like taking ship off. Man, anybody ice fishes nose like like you know, we're running the super long on this one. I'm gonna say one of the thing on that point. I ran into a guy deer hunting this year who was in his own and he had an ice shelter on top of his vehicle. I'm like, are you camping? And I was like, oh no, I got a wall tent. We just used this for a sauna. Seriously, exactly. My second story will not be a problem if you're the kind of person who only fishes inside of ice shanties. But we all know that most of us fish most of our time outdoors, and yeah, it's it's it's our preference, and so I'm gonna close out this. My segment of this week was something it's not exactly news, but I think it's important and and it's just based off of something that happened recently. So a couple of weeks ago, I posted a picture of myself with a big gest bandage on my face after I had a trip to the dermatolligence office, and honestly, like I was just kind of threw it up there, and I was really surprised how many people reached out to offer like condolences, but to also share their own stories of similar experiences, right, And so I figured, like I just I thought about that for a while and I decided I'm gonna cover this in Fish News. So for many many years when I was guiding, I had this stock line that I would tell clients when I was covering myself in sun block during a guide trip, and I would say that, well, you know, skin cancer is the leading killer of fishing guides, and then I'd usually followed up with with a stupid joke about cirrhosis of the liver being a close second, right. And then now, in researching this piece right now, actually couldn't find any legitimate source materials support that claim that I've been using for however many years. I did find a link to something that I wrote making that statement, but that's not exactly a verification. Uh, and so listit. I'm not saying skin cancer isn't the leading killer of fishing guides, just that I don't think anyone's really tracking those particular stats. It very well could be. But here are some real act rule stats for you. Skin cancer is the most common form of cancer. In fact, it's more common than all the other forms of cancer combined. One in five Americans will be diagnosed with some form of it by the time they reached seventy and unlike lots of other cancers, we know what causes it, and we know how to avoid it. We just don't always, you know, do the things we know we should do. Dude, most most of my life I didn't want to hear it, but like, over the last ten years or so, I've gotten really serious. I have a whole sunscreen regiment before I leave the house to fish. Oh yeah, A look, man, I'm the same way. I had my first skin cancer moved when I was twenty nine, all right, and and my doctor at that time just sort of put the situation in terms that even my dumbass could understand before he performed the surgery. He just simply said, to me, here's the deal. You're going to die of something completely preventable because you're an idiot. And there's no like swelling music. There's no melodrama. He didn't like have a hallmark. But with me and lock eyes and this meaningful appeal for me to change my ways, you just like dropped that dead pan and then grabbed a needle full of idocy and stuck it in me and hacked off a chunk of my neck where right like right where the all those cells were mutating. And this is also where I learned the contrary to everything we were told as kids from the X Men and teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, mutations don't actually turn us into superheroes are half animal martial arts experts. They just kill us really slowly, bullshit jokes aside. I'm like, I'm really lucky that that mutation I had at twenty nine was was something called a basal cell carcinoma. And I know it's weird to say this, but if you're gonna get skin cancer, that's the kind you want. They're they're slow growing. I touched, dude. My mom has worked for a dramatologist my whole life. I know all these terms. Yea. So though if you get those, they're slow growing, they're rarely fatal. The growth I had cut off a couple of weeks ago was another basil cell. So again, I got lucky. But there's a lot of people, including people I know very well, who don't. And and true, there's nearly eighteen thousand Americans die skin cancer every year. And so bringing this back, people who fish a lot, meaning you and and me and Joe and your buddies, we spent a lot of time in the sun, and and that sun exposure drastically increases our chances of getting skin cancer. It's just truth. Also, men are more than twice as likely to die from skin cancer as women, mostly because, as that doctor so astutely pointed, out to me in my twenties, we have a higher tendency towards idiocy and reckless behavior and stubbornness. Yeah, this is especially true for young men. Not that doesn't apply to young women. All of us should should hear this. But those are just the stats. I don't know about you, but when I was a kid, Smerion sunblock was just about as cool as wearing a bike helmet, and like a tan served as this marker of legitimacy, right, like you could just look at someone to know like, oh, they go outside like the boogie boards. Yeah, I think those attitudes are changing, at least like it seems that way. If the prevalence of buffs I mean for those you don't know, I'm talking about those stretchable synthetic for skins to cover your neck and face, the prevalence of buffs on the waters any indication people are starting to figure it out. Like I said at the beginning, I can't prove skin cancer is the leading killer fishing guides, but just about every guide I know who's been at it for a while has had some form of skin cancer. And and even if those facts I spout it for years were unfounded I stand by the underlying intention that I had with making that statement, right, Like, if you're on the water a lot, like a fishing guide, you will get some exposure. And Big six science tells us that exposure has a good chance of giving you skin cancer, which very well might kill you. Or if you're lucky, just mean you have to go visit a friendly neighborhood dermatologist a couple of times a year who will regularly come at you with sharp objects and charge you a lot of money for that privilege. I admit the covering myself from head to toe looks silly, and reapplying sunblock every couple hours of annoying, But honestly, man, I wish i'd started doing it sooner, and and like you were saying, so do most of the anglers that I know, Like we all wish we had done this earlier and we didn't, and now we're paying for it. Yea, So it's dude, So do I I because it's it's not that big a deal. And I also think that there's so many better sun blocks out there now than when we were kids, Like it was all just like greasy ass copper tone now, like my wife buys this ship. I mean, it's fifty six dollars a bottle, but it like it also improves my skin, It like evaporates immediately. But I'm very diligent about it now, and I have been for probably about the last ten years. Like I said, but I will say one place I falter is I have this like you know how they say no no white pants or shoes after Labor Day. I have this thing where if it's before May one, I just forget about. It's like it's not blazing summer. And like I burned myself at least once per spring in like March, you know what I mean, because I'm just not thinking about it. Then. Um no, I screw this up too, But I tried. I'm trying to be a lot better about it. I really am. Yeah, And really the worst thing that comes from from being so diligent is at some point, inevitably late in the day you get the sweat I run and like you're blind. That's the worst thing. You can't wash it out. You can't, you can't wash it out. It's terrible anyway, I um, I don't appreciate the force can comment by by Buck sponsorship event just screwed the pooch on that one. But that's okay um? And can you think of a better analogy? No, no, no, no, I cannot, I cannot. And this is good because I know a couple of kids who I'm hoping he the great advice to you you just gave. And this is a story I'll try to make h made quick. But if I'm just gonna go ahead and say, many of you listening, and you're two hosts here, this is gonna make you go Them's were the days to be young and free and and without a mortgage. This is from ABC twenty seven News out of Des Moines, Iowa. Headline to college freshman ditch school go on nationwide fishing trip. Okay uh. That could have been truncated for me to read Joe ditches all math classes go surf fishing. Still doesn't understand square roots? Okay um? Anyway, So, according to this story, best friends Luke Conson and Daniel Bowserack of Virginia are living out of their parents van while they drive state to state on a quest to catch each state's official state fish. The eighteen and nineteen year old buddies decided to embark on this journey after the pandemic derailed their college plans. Um and both of these dudes were scheduled to be freshman at Clemson University. And here's a quote about this from Conson, and I I want to read it as certain, I want to read it the way I think he would say it, but I won't. Okay, I'll just anyway. So the quote is, Uh, Then, about two weeks before moving in, they announced the first month of classes would be online, and we didn't want to do that. So then the story goes on to say the trip took some convincing for their parents and a lot of research and planning. Yeah, I bet it did, fellas, I bet it took a lot of convincing. And here's here's the thing, right, I look these cats up on Instagram, and if you want to follow the journey, you can find them at fish All fifty. That's all spelled out. And I'm gonna go out on a limb, and I'm just gonna say, based on looks alone, neither one of these kids would be turned off by a KEG stand you know what I'm saying. So if I put myself in their shoes at that age, it makes me wonder how the card was played, because I feel like I'd have been smart enough to tell my folks, like, you know, I'm really worried mom and Dad that I won't get the education I deserve, you know, And I want to see your hard earned tuition money setting me up for the best possible future success. So let's just wait. Let's just wait until I can get a quality in person education where I can, you know, pop in and see the professor from having trouble with my thesis. But in my head, I'd be thinking no beer bonds, no skipping class to fish, and I still have to live with my parents. So yeah, college right now? Okay. And if I'm wrong about these two, if I've misread them, fine, but I do I feel so terrible for college kids right now, especially freshman, because you go to be free and part of your ass off and like learn a little bit of sh it on the side. Um. And if I proposed a nationwide fish toward my dad, it'd have been like, sit your ass down and log into business ethics right now. So anyway, back to the story, here's another quote. I think we're probably staying safer than most people just because we're not around too many people and we're just outside kind of living our lives, said balls Rack. I think it's a great way to take this opportunity of the pandemic and turn it into something that's pretty fun. Yeah, I'm so glad it's been fun for YouTube buds. Okay, cheers to that. That's two people who don't want to cry every night. But that's okay. The Fish All fifty quest began on the East coast, then up to the Northeast and now into the Midwest, and Constance says, we just kind of gave it a purpose. There's a goal to it. It's not just any fish, it's the specific species, which adds a feeling of accomplishment. When you actually do get it, it's a little more difficult, and then it closes out with this right, and here's where I'm like, Okay, wait a sec. The fisherman spent several days in Iowa trying to catch the channel catfish with no luck. At first. They say fishing is teaching them about patients and life in a pandemic. Dudes, no disrespect, but like, it took you multiple days to catch a channel catfish, right days, you somehow manage the wild brookie in New Jersey, which is our state. Fish Yet like you're getting tripped up on Channel cats and like has panic buying an Iowa cleared the shelves of hot dogs and cherry kool aid, you know what I mean? Um, but look or like chicken livers or so. So I'm gonna I'm gonna keep an eye on the gram and see what these dudes get up to. But like the Channel struggles got me wondering, like, is this it was fishing just a ruse? You know what I mean to do like nationwide party tour, you know what I'm saying, Like maybe it was like a look. I think that the quote that you read from them completely answers your question. And I think you know when they say we gave it a purpose, that is a clear signal to be like, all right, we need a road trip from how do we how do we justify this as like a legitimate thing that's like learning based. Oh bro, I don't know. I like to fish. Do you fish a little bit? Okay? I think and I'm not. But you know what that's not if that's what they did, If it's total bullshit and it's just like, yeah, we're gonna sell this state fish. Maybe we can do me, we can get credit for it later. It clems in you man, if you're partying across the U. S And Avan and these hellish times, I wish I was you. Yeah, and and only that they they've managed to sell it and frame it well enough to get national media attention on it, which that tells me one thing and one thing alone. These guys are gonna do great when they make it to college, because they will be the kids that don't do any of the reading or any of the prep, and we'll come in and be able to bus their way through every lecture and every paper and every discussion and sound like it made sense and they planned it the whole way. So I think they have a bright future ahead of them, and I wish them well in their quest. Well, we're gonna see who's got a bright future here, you or me with Phil who's about to weigh in and and and and declare a news winner this week and stick around because right after that we're gonna go do some drinking. For that's my bar for inspiring me to make my own appointment with a dermatologist. Myles Nulte, you're the winner this week and going back to what you guys were talking about at the top of the show. I would like to give a shout out to Pierre. To Pierre also ran I Mesh for teaching me that every vaguely reggae sounding song was written by Bob Marley, every parody song ever written was by weird al Yankovic, and for providing me with a incredibly low grade MP three quality soundtrack as I awkwardly flirted with girls over a o L and sent messenger, as well as other puberty driven horrors I experienced over my mom's Netscape connection. Best God Damn Bartender from Tim buck to to Portland, Maine the Portland argument for that matter. This week's That's My Bar submission comes to us from Trevor Hubbs. Trevor was clearly board one day at work and sent us a novella about his local watering hole that turned into like by the end, it kind of just devolved into a self diagnosed psychotherapy session. I, for one, can relate to overthinking insignificant stuff like you know, where one chooses to drink beer, so I definitely resonated with this one. I had to edit it down a little bit for time, but but here's Trevor's shout out. I'll just add before you start that like pour yourself a glass of something and like snuggle in because this is like that's that's what this requires. It's so good. It's very well done. So Trevor says, what must a good fishing bar have? Good service, unique and creative cocktails, decent food, friendly atmosphere, fair prices, a general sense that you won't get hepatitis C. If you don't need any of the above, then the Reef Point Resort in Hartford, Wisconsin is for you. Beautifully situated on Pike Lake in east central Wisconsin, brief Point Resort offers all the basic necessities to keep you alive edible food, reasonable shelter, and potable tap water. If you arrive too early, they may not be open, but don't worry. The door is always unlocked. You just have to act as your own bartender until someone arrives. Upon entering, your immediately hit with the stale smell of spilled beer and whiskey with just a hint of urine drifting in from outside. After a nasal adjustment, you slide up to the greasy bar and notice a crock pot full of chili from nineteen sixty that's never been turned off. The bartender will be cleaning pint glasses with a dirty rag, but that doesn't matter because the beer is served in cans anyway. When the uppies from Milwaukee and the FIBs from Chicago go home each winter, a magical transformation occurs at the Reef Point Resort. This bar, so dingy and disheveled in the summer, somehow becomes a warm and inviting den when the snowflies. Cigarette smoke and steam from wet clothes mixed with the smell of melting nylon from coats that got too close to numerous space eaters. The chili that in July you wouldn't feed your dog now inspires a craving more associated with a hungry wolf than a man. After a morning methodically jigging for perch on the frozen lake wasteland, this oasis of booze and warmth is the greatest place on Earth. With the badgers or packers game on a small, blurry eighteen inch TV mounted in the corner, men and women sip on their partially frozen cans of beer, shoveled dirty chili into their mouths, and talk about pikes so large they couldn't pull them through the hole in the ice. We paid ten bucks for a frozen pizza with a piece missing because the bartender was hungry, three dollars for a bowl of that questionable chili, and three fifty for canned beer from thirty packs. That's sitting a stack against the wall behind the bar. But the best part is watching the other ice fishermen through the windows. You hear the familiar call of flag and watch overweight men past their prime race across the ice to their tip ups. This site, over and over from November through February, is what brings people to this small bar. We eat, drink, watch fat guys fall down, and we couldn't be happier. Every summer I swear I'll never go in there again. But then December comes, deer season ends, and I find myself knee deep in a six pack, sharing a stranger's pocket jerky he calls a wildlife mix, and waiting for a tip up so I can watch another mad dash across the ice. I can't tell if I had just made myself depressed writing this reviewer. If I can't wait for ice fishing season, this probably says more about small town Wisconsin winners than it does about the Reef Point Resort. But it's now five o'clock and I have been able to pretend to be working while I type out this email. But if my boss sees me stay past five, he'll know it's not for work. So I gotta go. Thank you for that. Trevor can think of what what is the nostalgic show with a young Fred Savage that has the narrator the Wonder Years, The Wonder Years, Trevor, I would like to I would like to option this as a script for a film, and that I will put in Sundance because that was I I couldn't even bring myself to interject because it was just so beautiful to listen to all that. No I I added nothing to that. That was all Trevor's vision when he was not working, and I think I think it was probably more productive than what he was supposed to do. In my opinion, it could have been. Or maybe it's proof that he's missing his true calling. You need to be, you know, writing for for Reader's digest or something. He's that good and there there's so many there's so many references in there I could go off on, but I'll just stick to one. It was my favorite when he talked about the smell of the slightly melted nylon with the space eaters and that that that takes me back to a steelhead trip years ago with a guy who was very proud of his brand new SIMS gortex jacket that he accidentally threw on the propane stove that was cooking our bacon and eggs on the drift boat. We were all fishing, going what the hell? And it just melted around the entire stove and stunk up. It was awful, and that's what I thought of. So thank you for taking me back to that moment, Trevor, which I honestly had forgotten about. Anyway, if you guys have a great bar, you want to show out out and kill time at the office where you want to make it look like you're being productive when you're actually just waxing poetic about dive bars, send it our way. Okay. You can find us at bent at the metator dot com. And if you put in half as much effort okay as Trevor, we'll have a good chance of grabbing our attention. So you know, if you just happen to be in east central Wisconsin and you want to spend the night drinking. You're welcome because we just helped you out. I would go to that place, but yep, that's that's our kind of place. But maybe you're not in the mood to go out drinking. Maybe you're in the mood to spend a night fishing, and I respect that that's the case. Joe's got an end of the line segment this week about one of our all time favorite lures that sounds so much sweeter in the dark, but like, if you really want to get a sense for it, it sounds the sweetest when it stops making noise because it just got hammered in the dark of night. So listen up, kids, because you were about to learn why you're granddad had more bass skills than you ever will and why you can do more exciting things after sundown. Then watch TikTok. If you just stop obsessing over all the new lures from Japan. Well that's not loud enough. The first commercially produced lure fred Arbigast ever unleashed on the angling masses, was called the Tin Liz, a metal loure that looked like a rather anatomically correct bait fish with a hinged metal tail that flapped and wiggled. This was in two and there's a strong chance that you've never heard of the tin Liz. But over the next six years, Old Fred dropped some innovative bombs on the angling world, several of which were so powerful that over eighty years later, fish are still dropping from the nuclear fallout of Fred's ingenuity. Some of his former best sellers have drifted out of production, notably the Hawaiian Wiggler, a predecessor of the modern chatter bait, and the mudbug, which there is a striking resemblance to the modern square bill crank bits that many young whipper snappers probably assume we're invented by Brandon Pollitick or Aaron Martin's within the last twenty years. No, you will not find an incredible selection of arbor gas lures at big box tackle shops these days. But you'll find too that remained pretty unchanged since their debuts, the Hula Popper, which hit the market in nineteen thirty six, and the Jitterbug, which was released in nineteen thirty eight, And that is the one that is the object of my affection in today's segment. Many consider the jitterbug the most innovative top word lure of all time. They're available in several sizes and patterns, jointed and non jointed. The bodies are oblong and look like tiny little Goodyear blimps. But despite the size, joint and color combo you choose, all models feature an upturned, cupped, heart shaped metal lip, and that, folks, is what really gives the jitterbug it's boom. All you have to do with the jitterbug is cast and real steadily warning. However, original jitterbugs are light, air resistant and kind of cast like ship. But still it's it's worth overlooking that minor ding. Okay, As the Lord moves across the surface, its side to side walking slash waddling action forces the outer edges of that metal lip to tap the water one side, then the other, back and forth at a high rate of speed, and what you end up with is this high pitched gurgle. Subsequently, all that lip slapping creates bubbles, which create a bubble trail which basically draws an arrow to the target for fish below during the entire retrieve. Now I love night fishing for any species that bites after dark, And despite the countless other varieties of walking top orders from birds two bats too, I don't know what they make now chipmunks. Perhaps, ask any bass angler forty year older what kind of top order they tie on first for a dark ops hog roping session. Most, if not all, are going to call out the jitterbug from the get go. Fred arbor Gas designed the jitterbug to shine in low light. Now, back in a long gone era, like before I had kids, I'd frequently dropped my raft on the Delaware River after sundown for all nighter jitterbug only smallmouth flow. During that same era, I do the same thing on local stocker streams, swinging small jitterbugs through tailouts for holdover browns, and on trips across the country. I can't tell you how many times I've busted out a jitterbug only to shock another angler I'm with. It's like that moment of realizing you were both part of the same frat in college. You both fish a lord that's been around nearly a century, but act as if you're both in on some dark secret. So why is that? It's because the jitterbug isn't cool? Man? It's not new, it's not from Japan, it's not being used by the Google squad, it's not winning the bass Master Classic. It's fair to say it's squarely off the radar of the young bucks. And even when they see it, what they see is Grandpa's lore And what the hell did he know? He didn't even have eight carrier braided line or Squincher energy drink mix in his tactical tackle bag. Ironically, the current leadership at Arbor Gast is trying to change that via the Jitterbug two point oh same nineteen thirty eight design, same action, though now those little blimp bodies come in colors like Shadow, a mod frog pattern, Mutant featuring sharp shrewse tiger stripes that resemble the Monster energy logo, and Undead, which features a fish skeleton on the sides and zombie like eyes. Bonus, All of these new patterns glow in the dark. Now, I do appreciate the effort to get the kids excited about the Jitterbug. And kids, if a jitterbug with a glowing skeleton gets you excited to buy it, buy it, that's great. Give it a whirl and you'll soon realize that what you really need is a plain black jitterbug, just like your great grand pappy. Through and being able to see your jitterbug out there is no benefit to you or the fish. It's auditory. Man. When that gurgle stops on a still summer night, you'll be hooked. Well, that's all the time we have this week to recap. File at knives can be a real pain in the ass when they're totally unnecessary to begin with. You now understand the proper term for the place where your beer can end goes on the boat. We found a bar that both smells like you're an end, has pollable water, and Joe may still end up in jail over all that music he's illegally downloaded. I expect the raid to happen anytime now, you know, so listen before I head to the clink over bootleg gutter Mouth tracks. I still have books of CDs downstairs somewhere that like have all the music I downloaded from Lime Wire on the disc and finally threw them away in the last move. They're still in you know. Anyway. I would love to have some more emails from you guys before I get locked away, so please keep those comments criticisms, suggestions, bar nominations, awkward photos, checking account routing numbers, and sale ban items coming to bent at the meat eater dot com. Yeah, and hey, it's December. It means some of you might maybe possibly be getting out on the ice this weekend if there is any that's right. And remember, if you're unsure the thickness, do the same thing and send your huskiest friend out there first

Save this episode